Barbara Lee, Running for Oakland Mayor as a ‘Public Safety’ Advocate, Said She Was ‘Really Proud’ When Minneapolis Pledged To Defund Police

The openly Marxist Barbara Lee is going to be the next Mayor of Oakland.  When elected expect the cost of business and homeowner insurance to skyrocket.  Why?  She does not believe in police or law enforcement.

“”I mean, I never, I’ve never uttered ‘defund the police,’” Lee told San Francisco’s KRON4 station. “I never was there. Some were, some weren’t. But that’s okay. I wasn’t. Some said it was only progressives who were doing the right thing for police reform. And believe you me, I’ve been out there on police accountability and police reform. That’s me. But, believe you me, I understand the need for public safety for everyone.”

Those comments stand in stark contrast with what Lee said in June 2020. She told Politico she was “really proud” of the Minneapolis City Council’s pledge to defund their police. In December that year, Lee said, “We have to restructure our funding priorities in terms of how we make our communities safe.”

Under Lee crime will continue to rise as the numbers of cops go down.  If you go to Oakland, make sure your affairs are in order and you have your health insurance paid.

Barbara Lee, Running for Oakland Mayor as a ‘Public Safety’ Advocate, Said She Was ‘Really Proud’ When Minneapolis Pledged To Defund Police

Oakland is facing an ongoing crime surge as Lee launches her bid for mayor

Susannah Luthi, Washington Free Beacon,  1/27/25  https://freebeacon.com/california/barbara-lee-running-for-oakland-mayor-as-a-public-safety-advocate-said-she-was-really-proud-when-minneapolis-pledged-to-defund-police/

Barbara Lee is pitching herself as a public safety advocate in her quest to become mayor of Oakland. As a congresswoman, the California Democrat praised Minneapolis for moving to defund its police force and called to “restructure” police budgets.

Lee swore to make Oakland “stronger and safer” when she launched her mayoral bid on Jan. 8, and her campaign website lists public safety as a top priority. Last week, Lee denied ever supporting the defund the police movement.

“I mean, I never, I’ve never uttered ‘defund the police,’” Lee told San Francisco’s KRON4 station. “I never was there. Some were, some weren’t. But that’s okay. I wasn’t. Some said it was only progressives who were doing the right thing for police reform. And believe you me, I’ve been out there on police accountability and police reform. That’s me. But, believe you me, I understand the need for public safety for everyone.”

Those comments stand in stark contrast with what Lee said in June 2020. She told Politico she was “really proud” of the Minneapolis City Council’s pledge to defund their police. In December that year, Lee said, “We have to restructure our funding priorities in terms of how we make our communities safe.”

And Lee’s top two donors to her failed Senate campaign last year—who almost exclusively bankrolled her affiliated super PAC, She Speaks For Me—are major Oakland fixtures pushing soft-on-crime policies and politicians. Quinn Delaney, wife of Bay Area real estate developer Wayne Jordan, contributed $1 million, and Patty Quillin, wife of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, added another $500,000. Federal Election Commission filings show only one other donor, Terry Winograd, who contributed just $15,000.

Delaney and Quillin helped form Smart Justice California, a PAC that since 2018 has poured $25 million into electing progressive California district attorneys and lawmakers while lobbying for lighter criminal punishments, avenues for more lenient re-sentencing, and emptying prisons.

Delaney and Jordan also founded the Oakland-based Akonadi Foundation, a nonprofit that funded the push to remove police from the city’s schools. From 2016 to 2022, the foundation was helmed by former vice president Kamala Harris’s protégé Lateefah Simon, a fellow defund the police advocate who won Lee’s vacated congressional seat. Simon used her position to funnel more than $2 million to Bay Area anti-police and anti-prison projects in 2020 alone. Over three years, Simon, through Akonadi, sent $130,000 to the abolitionist organization Anti Police-Terror Project.

Lee endorsed Simon for her congressional bid, which she won by a landslide 31 points in November. And Simon quickly endorsed Lee for mayor, calling her a “mentor” and praising her as Oakland’s 30-year “champion in Congress” who delivered “real results on public safety.”

Yet Oakland is at a critical juncture: The city is grappling with both financial insolvency and an ongoing crime surge. Violent crime spiked 21 percent in 2023 over the previous year, and homicides rose by 20 percent compared with average of the previous five years. Robberies and car thefts have jumped as well.

Lee’s most likely top rival in the April 15 special election, former Democratic city councilman Loren Taylor, narrowly lost in the last mayoral contest. He has pushed for tougher police measures, including surveilling license plates to find stolen cars, and accused former Mayor Sheng Thao of firing the former police chief without cause shortly after her election.

In November, Oakland voters ousted both Thao and district attorney Pamela Price, a George Soros-backed prosecutor who faced public ire for slashing sentences of convicted murderers and refusing to charge minors as adults, even for homicide.

Lee opposed both recalls.

Thao was criminally indicted earlier this month on an alleged bribery and fraud scheme with local recycling magnates and high-profile Oakland political donors Andy Duong and David Duong. The latter has contributed nearly $89,000 to Lee’s campaigns since 1998, according to federal election filings.

Price, meanwhile, received $25,000 from Delaney and $1,000 from Quillin to fend off the recall efforts.

Delaney, in 2014, spent $200,000 to promote Prop. 47, which raised the threshold for felony retail theft. Quillin poured $1.5 million into Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón’s 2020 election. In November, voters gutted the measure after critics argued that it was a significant driver of the crime surge across major California cities and ousted the Soros-backed prosecutor as he faced an outcry over his policies like ending cash bail and releasing violent offenders.

Lee has a mixed legislative record on crime and punishment. She cosponsored bills for grants to boost law enforcement in dangerous neighborhoods and to increase sentencing and funding for hate crime prosecution, which she voted to extend to anti-gay crimes.

But she also voted to cut violent offender prison programs by $61 million and opposed funding for state juvenile correction programs. She cosponsored the unsuccessful George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, which would have made it easier to convict police officers for misconduct and limited their qualified immunity.

Lee’s rhetoric on public safety since launching her mayoral bid has drawn skepticism from some of Oakland’s reform-minded residents.

“The bottom line is: Oakland voters, are you going to fall for this again?” said local activist Seneca Scott, who helped lead the Thao and Price recalls.

Oakland city councilman Ken Houston, who said he’s known Lee for years, said the former congresswoman’s opposition to those recalls bothers him, though he still supports her in the mayoral race as it currently stands.

Whoever takes Oakland’s mayorship has “got to be hard on crime,” Houston said, though he opposes “over-policing.”

“You’ve got to bring back healthy respect, healthy fear and respect. That’s not there any longer,” he said.